The present invention relates to a method of encrypting motion picture data, and a computer system and motion picture data encoding/decoding apparatus to which this method is applied.
In recent years, with the advance in computer technology, various multimedia personal computers have been developed. A personal computer of this type can reproduce not only text data and graphics data but also motion picture data and audio data.
Generally, motion picture data is compressed and encoded in accordance with the MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) 1, and stored in a CD (Compact Disk). The motion picture data is decoded, displayed, and reproduced using a dedicated expansion board. As an expansion board for decoding, displaying, and reproducing motion picture data, e.g., "REAL Magic" available from Sigma Designs, Inc., USA is well known. This "REAL Magic" has a video decode function complying with the MPEG 1 standard. The decoded motion picture data is synthesized with VGA graphics received from a video card via a feature connector, and the synthesized motion picture is displayed.
The MPEG 1 standard, however, assumes the use of a CD having a data transfer rate of about 1.5 Mbps. Processing motion picture data containing a large amount of image data such as a movie leads to a degradation in image quality, and the like.
Recently, a DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) has been developed as a new-generation storage medium having a data transfer rate substantially higher than that of the CD. The DVD has a new video disk standard capable of recording video data such as a movie with a high image quality on an optical disk having the same size as that of the CD by using motion picture coding called the MPEG 2. A recording/reproducing method for the DVD is based on variable rate coding in order to ensure acceptable levels for both the image quality and the recording time with respect to the capacity. The amount of variable-rate encoded data depends on the quality of an original image. A more abruptly changing scene requires a larger amount of data.
When motion picture data stored in the DVD is to be reproduced on a personal computer, the data is read from a DVD-ROM in the main memory of the computer, and transferred to a DVD decoder. In this case, to prevent illegal copying of the data loaded in the main memory, and its illegal use, all video data included in the motion picture data must be subjected to encryption such as scramble processing.
For a recent higher-speed CPU, a so-called software decoder is desired to be realized to decode motion picture data not by dedicated hardware but by software. If the motion picture data is decoded by the software decoder, the dedicated hardware can be omitted to reduce the cost of the whole system.
However, in the use of the software decoder, the descramble processing of descrambling the scrambled motion picture data must be executed by the CPU, in addition to original processing of decoding motion picture data encoded in accordance with the MPEG 2. Since descramble processing is performed for all video data contained in the motion picture data, the load due to descramble processing on the CPU is very large. Therefore, most of the CPU power (load) is used by descramble processing, and decode processing is practically difficult to perform in real time.
As described above, since all video data is scrambled in the prior art, a large CPU power is required for descramble processing. Therefore, it is practically difficult to simultaneously satisfy the copy protect function and the software decoder.